Like many neurodivergent people, I struggle with sensory issues. Until moving to Finland, I thought my main sensory triggers were lights and sounds, but smells affect me the most here. Because I’m sensitive to cigarette smoke and scented products in general, I often suffer from violent coughing spasms and migraine headaches. These issues severely impair my ability to study and my accessibility overall.
When I go to campus, I avoid entrances where there’s someone smoking upwind of the doors. Once indoors, I breathe shallowly and often hold my breath when others get too close. Many of my courses require in-person participation and groupwork, often in classrooms where the windows don’t open (if there are any). With small group discussions and the bright lights needed to keep other students awake, I need to use extra energy to focus – energy that I don’t have because I can barely breathe.
Thankfully, I’m mostly done with classes and just have my thesis left, but I’ve found it difficult to write with these sensory issues. My apartment is small and sometimes noisy, and I can’t find a space on campus that I can book for an entire working day, let alone one where I can dim the lights and open a window. Using shared study spaces means coping with other people coming and going, people who talk or play music, people who reek of cigarettes or wear scents that give me a migraine lasting the entire day (or longer).
Even when I do book a space, because I dim or turn off the lights, people often barge in, assuming the room is unoccupied. It’s difficult to regulate my focus to begin with, and these sudden interruptions require me to put in much more effort to continue working. To use an analogy: if my brain were a laptop, each sensory issue forces me to run another power-intensive program, and every interruption forces me to restart. These invisible struggles drain my capacity for executive functioning and affect every aspect of my life.
How can universities help? One idea is Stoßlüften – completely opening windows and doors daily to air out the building. Making it possible to participate online also helps. Maybe Aalto can encourage people to smoke further away from building entrances and paths by installing shelters with ashtrays. Or Aalto can provide sensory rooms for those feeling overstimulated, or — better yet — single-occupancy study spaces with dimmable lights and access to fresh air. Overall, I wish everyone would be more mindful of where they smoke or vape and how much scented product they use.
About the author: Kay Wolf is a master’s student in Spatial Planning and Transportation Engineering at Aalto University. Despite being autistic and ADHD, he’s lived in eleven time zones across the world.